February 5, 2014

There is much chatter on the internet today about creation and the age of the earth. This is partially because of last night’s debate between atheist, Bill Nye, and young earth creationist, Ken Ham. Whether you take the time to listen to the debate or not, I’d encourage you to read Al Mohler’s musings about what took place. The issue isn’t so much about evidence as it is about worldview.

Here is a helpful discussion about science, the age of the earth, and Christianity at the Ligonier Conference several years ago. It is worth listening to.

December 9, 2013

May 21, 2012

Yesterday, most of us were dazzled by the solar eclipse. Debbie and I were blessed yesterday afternoon with some eclipse glasses gifted to us by Dennis Mitchell. This was an unforeseen blessing. I traveled to town early Thursday morning to bag some glasses only to be told that I needed to try again on Friday. At that point I assumed that we wouldn’t be seeing the eclipse. Then, Dennis saved the day and we were able to rejoice in God’s amazing creation. All beauty is God’s beauty. Here’s a quote from J. Gresham Machen after viewing an event to one we witnessed yesterday:

When I viewed the spectacle of the total eclipse of the sun at New Haven on the twenty-fourth of January 1925, I was confirmed in my theism. Such phenomena make us conscious of the wonderful mechanism of the universe, as we ought to be conscious of it every day; at such moments anything like materialism seems to be but a very pitiful and very unreasonable thing. I am no astronomer, but of one thing I was certain: when the strange, slow-moving shadow was gone, and the world was bathed again in the wholesome light of day, I knew that the sun, despite its vastness, was made for us personal beings and not we for the sun, and that it was made for us personal beings by the living God.

March 12, 2012

Here is a post by Justin Taylor and one by Denny Burk reminding us of just how small we really are. Here’s a quote from the Taylor piece:

In other words, you and everything you know resides on a tiny, wet rock nearly a million times less massive than the star that powers it, in a solar system one ten-millionth the diameter of our galaxy, which contains at least hundreds of billions of stars not so different from ours, in a Universe filled with hundreds of billions of galaxies, and maybe perhaps more.

The bottom line is that we can’t process how insignificant we are and how significant God is.

Psalm 8:3-4

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

4 What is man that you are mindful of him,

And the son of man that you care for him?

Here is a list of what some believe are the 10 most significant TV shows of all time. I bet you can’t guess numero uno. And, much to my chagrin, it wasn’t Star Trek.

How should we battle spiritual despondency (or temptation)? Here John Piper offers six strategies that Jesus employed in Gethsemane.

C. S. Lewis, letter to Mary Neylan, January 20, 1942:I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations.

It is not serious provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience etc doesn’t get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes are airing in the cupboard.

The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present to us: it is the very sign of His presence.–The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 2 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 507; emphasis original

November 10, 2011

“If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents—the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts—i.e. of materialism and astronomy—are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.” – C.S. Lewis